One of the principal functions of the SWG-GII was the establishment of a GII Standards Roadmap, intended to provide guidance for the evolution, management, and development of GII standards (i.e. those supporting the development, implementation, and operability of existing and future information services and applications within and across the telecommunications, information technology, consumer electronics, and content-provision industries).

March 13, 1996 SWG-GII Meeting, Geneva, Switzerland.

April 1996 Strategies for the integration and development of standards for the Global Information Infrastructure (GII). Final report of the ISO/IEC/ ITU International Seminar on the Standards Aspects of the Global Information Infrastructure (GII)Information and Communications Technology Standards: the tools for implementing the Information Society, Geneva, Switzerland, 24-26 January, 1996, prepared by ISO/IEC JTC 1/ Ad Hoc Group on GII.

September 25-27, 1996 SWG-GII Meeting, Galway, Ireland.

December 4-6, 1996 SWG-GII Meeting, Paris, France.

December 1996 First Report for ISO/IEC JTC 1 on Global Information Infrastructure standardization.

Intended to meet the GII requirement that relevant standardization activities being conducted by various standards-development organizations and consortia shall be co-ordinated adequately. Efficiency of development and communication being essential, we should capitalize on the use of electronic means. To assist in achieving this, an industrial Operational Roundtable, organized by the SWG-GII, and hosted by the Center for Standards of the U.S. Department of Defense, was held in Reston, VA, U.S.A. Some twenty-three organizations made presentations on the collaborative processes and electronic tools employed in their endeavours; those participating included industrial representatives and professional standardizers from the Americas, Europe, and the Pacific Rim.

As part of the goal to achieve better co-ordination and faster delivery in this field of ever-accelerating development for which the traditional standards-development process had proved too slow and cumbersome, a number of actions were identified. These included the setting up of a World Wide Web facility with hyperlinking to other facilities and documentation including work programmes, and further meetings of key players concentrating on developments of successful processes of collaboration.

The Role of the GII Rapporteur Groupwas to act as a JTC 1 focus and champion for GII matters. It took over responsibility from SWG-GII for GII Collaboration with ITU-T Study Group 13, for maintenance of the GII Roadmap, and for progressing the GII common overview document. The participants, appointed by JTC 1 member national bodies, operated as a virtual team making maximum use of electronic methods to share information, track developments, and collaborate on GII standards strategy.

Report on SWG-GII Achievements: JTC 1 Deliverables

JTC 1 considered and approved specific SWG-GII recommendations in Ottawa, September 1997. These included instructions to JTC 1 SCs regarding the elimination of options, which contribute to interoperability problems, and the creation of separate Executive Summaries for use in standards catalogues and other databases. Other approved recommendations refer to a) implementable staged deliverables to be scheduled for completion within the shortest possible timeframes; b) interoperability demonstrations by pilot implementations simultaneously with the development of the staged deliverables; c) the use of multi-organizational project-oriented activities in the development of technical reports/specifications; d) the use of scenario-based approaches and the inputs from other organizations in the creation of new work items; and e) the establishment of an Ad Hoc on GII Security.

JTC 1 GII Standards Roadmap

The Standards Roadmap, developed by the SWG-GII and JTC 1 SCs, had structured groupings containing web hyperlinks to the latest JTC 1 GII standards and GII relevant work which had progressed to at least Committee Draft stage within JTC 1 Subcommittees. Its maintenance was entrusted to the new JTC 1 GII Rapporteur Group.

Collaboration with ITU-T Study Group 13

The SWG-GII work with the ITU-T Lead Study Group on the GII (SG13) complemented the successful ongoing technical collaboration between JTC 1 and ITU-T. It concentrated on mutual exchange of information and on the development of a common vocabulary and visionary overview for the GII. The SG13 and SWG-GII initiative on a single common GII terminology was adopted by JTC 1/SC 1 (Vocabulary) which carried the JTC 1 contribution to the joint work through to completion.

GII Virtual Roundtable

The SWG-GII work resulted in the establishment of a GII Virtual Roundtable. This was an organization-neutral online forum in which all standards development organization (ISO, IEC, ITU, IETF, DAVIC, OMG, VRML, etc.) were treated as peers. Its primary goal was to facilitate global collaboration among standards development organizations, consortia, and other specification-development organizations. It achieved this by providing a common place for users and consumers to voice their requirements and establish an ongoing global dialogue on mutual sharing of techniques and approaches for collaborative standards work. The aim was to use the World Wide Web to enable virtual collaboration through easy online posting and retrieval of global information infrastructure standardization events, workplans, and deliverables.

JTC 1 instructs its RG-GII to discontinue further work on the Roadmap and Overview documents

Recommendation 2: Endorsement of Consumer Requirements

JTC 1 welcomed information on generic requirements for standards likely to be used by or impact directly on consumers. JTC 1 endorsed the generic requirements identified in ANEC98/ICT/06 Section 8.1 (February 1998) and instructed JTC 1 subordinate bodies to consider these requirements when developing standards.

JTC 1 further resolved that its Secretariat a) advise COPOLCO and ANEC of this decision and b) thanked ANEC for its work and requested ANEC to provide the JTC 1 Secretariat with future updates to its list of generic requirements.

Recommendation 3: Participation in GSC-5

JTC 1 welcomed the invitation to participate as observers in GSC-5 and appointed its Chairman and representatives (JTC 1 ITU-T Liaison officer and the JTC 1 IEC TC 100 Liaison Officer) to participate on behalf of JTC 1 and to report back at the next JTC 1 Plenary.